GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, Muhannad Hadi, said that “UNRWA has about 13,000 staff in the Gaza Strip.”
Hadi had just returned from a visit to Gaza, where he observed signs of recovery amid ongoing humanitarian challenges.
UNRWA employs 13,000 people in Gaza, by the way—it is the second-largest employer in Gaza after the Palestinian authorities” he said, underscoring the need for continued support for the agency’s operations.
“When I entered Gaza this morning, it felt like this was probably one of the happiest days of my professional life,” said Muhannad Hadi.
Hadi described a markedly different atmosphere compared to his previous visits over the past year. ” The people I met had a different attitude. It made me very happy to see that people had already started moving, some of them going back to their places of origin,” he said.
Despite progress, Hadi acknowledged the challenges in maintaining and scaling up aid delivery. “The reason I don’t like to focus on trucks is simply that there are a lot of services that the people of Gaza need that you don’t load on trucks: protection, psychosocial support, education itself.” He also added, “We need to make sure right now that we focus on bringing in as much humanitarian aid as we can.”
